The Bullets Forever website breaks the story down pretty well.

I guess this is a way to start the year with a …… bang…. had to do it.

10-time All-Star

4 scoring titles, 3 consecutive years

Playoff scoring average of 29.7 points per game second to Michael Jordan

1 NBA finals appearance

96-97 NBA Rookie of the year

All-Star MVP 2001 and 2005

5^th all time scoring average with 27.1 points per game

NBA MVP 2000-2001

In the 1996 NBA draft class, Iverson was in good company along with Kobe Byrant and Steve Nash to name a few. You can say that his off court antics and his behavior may hurt his chances at the NBA Hall of Fame but the Hall of Fame has inducted people that may have been worse. Let his on court actions speak for Allen Iverson. At under 6’ Iverson proved one thing, he can score. Perhaps one of the most gifted athletes ever in the NBA at his height. You can also argue that having not winning a NBA Championship as being a negative but there are plenty of future NBA Hall of Famers and current that dont have this credential.

Check Allen Iverson’s crossover against Michael Jordn in 1997:

Iverson’s Top 10 Plays:

My vote is yes. Allen Iverson deserves to be in the NBA Hall of Fame.

Los Angeles Lakers 2/1    
Orlando Magic 8/1    
Boston Celtics 9/2    
Cleveland Cavaliers 10/3    
Denver Nuggets 14/1    
San Antonio Spurs 15/2   

The Lakers have an outstanding chance of repeating, adding Ron Artest, who can make or break your team. I also like the Denver Nuggets at 14/1. The “Thuggets” were close last year making a nice run. The are coming into this season leaner and even more meaner. We are surprised that the Cleveland Cavaliers are not a little higher on that list but still in the Top 5.

Are there any sleepers? Perhaps the Washington Wizards at 65/1, Phoenix Suns 60/1, and Detroit Pistons 45/1. The Wizards are coming in with a lot of fanfare to be a contender based on their offseason moves. The wizards will depend on the health of Gilbert Arenas. The Phoenix Suns are a young team perhaps a rebuilding year but dont count them out.

Perhaps one of the most significant developments, but least apparent to the average fan, is the impact new methods of player evaluation/game preparation and management are having on NBA front offices and coaching staffs. In Moneyball, Michael Lewis documented how the adoption of complex statistical analysis and probability theory led to to a revolution in baseball player personnel evaluation, enabling cash-strapped franchises, such as the Oakland As, to construct rosters which could compete with those big money clubs. Efficiency was the name of the game for teams likes the Oakland As, who under Paul Depodesta and Billy Beane, enjoyed great success for a fraction what it cost perennial big spenders like the New York Yankees. More recently, Lewis used Shane Battier as the subject of a NY Times Magazine piece to explore about how similar quantitative techniques for analyzing and assigning value to player performance have begun to infiltrate the NBA.

Will the application of fancy equations and technical modeling to rebounds, assists, blocked shots, field goal percentage and whatever other categories capture player output, result in traditional evaluation frameworks becoming obsolete? Will those scouts and general management types who have developed an expert knowledge of player assessment, accumulated after many years of both playing and observing games, soon become expendable with increased demand among franchises for box-score obsessed math geeks (many who can’t make a layup) who obsessively feed reams of data into high powered computers in search of highest adjusted +/-?

Keep your eye on teams like the Houston Rockets and Dallas Maverick this year, pioneers of the new school super-crunching methods, to see what kind of actual outcomes their sophisticated data manipulation produces. As the season wears on, perhaps we can discern some divergence among teams using quants equipped with fashionable statistical methods versus those organizations less enthralled with such technical hocus pocus, but instead still prefer to trust the insights and feedback of the grizzled old-school scout working analog, relying on more subjective criteria, (in some cases little more than a feel for the game based on experience and exposure acquired over decades) in order to project NBA player prospects.

What I wanted to mention here though, is Gilbert Arenas new pledge not to talk to the media. Everyone knows Agent Zero propensity for exploiting perceived slights, leveraging them for motivation, in order to realize this or that goal. It’s well documented that Gil feels persecuted for not having been highly recruited out of high school; a second round NBA draft pick; dropped from Team USA basketball; and the biggest human right abuse of all, snubbed as a selection to the 2006 all-star games, and thus born the East Coast Assassin.  Martyrdom, however, did produce the intended outcome, with Gil catapulting himself into the NBA elite. It would have been nice if Gil had been using some of these incidents to fuel a drive for team or collective success, rather than individual accolades, but he was young and ambitious, wanting to establish a rep, so who cares.

Up until now. This summer and fall, Arenas narrative of victimization has begun to grate a bit. In that last few weeks he’s blamed the Washington Wizards coaches and trainers for not holding him back from playing after his first surgery, resulting in him re-injuring knee. Yet, at the time of Gil’s first comeback in the summer/fall of 2007,  Arenas blew off the Wizards rehabilitation schedule, instead trained on his own, and then declared himself ready to play, damn anyone who should stand in the way. This gripe from Arenas follows his insinuation, made a  few weeks earlier, that former coach Eddie Jordan was at fault for his misfortune, when EJ so much as held Gil out of the starting lineup the night of the injury, a penalty for being late to the locker room before the game.

This week Arenas declared a vowel silence with the media, ostensibly to span throughout the upcoming season. Gil accuses the media of distorting his image, having take his zany, irreverent blogging personality at face value in the past, rather than probing more deeply into who Arenas really might be. Com’on. Get over yourself man, and stop with throwing formerly supportive coaches, staff, media, etc., under the bus. Gil’s media boycott feels almost as narrcistic a ploy as wanting to be heard and adored around the clock, which Gil always made sure of when life was good and he was getting 60 on the Lakers.

I am a huge fan of Gil Arenas game, and generally find him completely entertaining. Everyone loves Agent Zero, Hibachi, Gilbertology and all the other shtick that went with Gil being Gil.  Jut hope he loses the chip on his shoulder, before he ends up sounding like this…

Related Posts:

Gilbert Arenas Media Quotes

Gilbert Arenas Media Day

Wizards Media Day Wrap Up

Gilber Arenas Pledges to be Serious